


sorting stars by shape and color

by selfetish



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: (or eiji dressing ash's wounds), Angst, Character Study, Falling In Love, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 06:36:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29837526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/selfetish/pseuds/selfetish
Summary: His fingers look pretty up close, so slender and knobby at the knuckles. Each of his nails are cut in neat ellipses and blush the faintest of pinks. Ash would call them delicate, but the pads of his fingers on his jaw feel terribly rough and calloused, probably from the fiberglass of his pole or reckless burns from a stove. But they hold the same charm as when they handle cameras and tend to every inch of him with meticulous care and considerate deftness. He almost leans into his touch. Almost.Everything is tended to, even the tiniest of parts. His eyelids, the dip of his cupid’s bow, curve of his brow and his ears. He caresses his helices and behind them as if they were a seashells he had plucked from gilded sand. He wipes his cheek steadfastly, enough to erase the freckles dotting there. Ash feels completely and utterly bare.Ash walks home, and dreams, and loves.
Relationships: 14-year-old Ash Lynx's Female Crush & Ash Lynx, Ash Lynx/Okumura Eiji
Comments: 14
Kudos: 74





	sorting stars by shape and color

**Author's Note:**

> what listening to mitski does to a mfer

Ash is walking up to the apartment haggardly, clutching his wounds— this time, knife slashes to his arms and a gun nick on his cheekbone. It could be worse, he tells himself. He swipes at the cut on his face with his thumb. It continues to bleed a moment later. He swipes at it again and wipes it on his jeans. It could be worse.

The years have taught him invisibility. Ash is a ghost amongst men now. He stays in the shadows, away from the orange light of lampposts. He’d always breathe from the nose and take in the iron smell of himself and the men that had fallen to his hand. He catches every drop of blood and lets it run through between his fingers.

Ash had always crossed realms with such panache; dyed red and disheveled from the claws of New York’s underbelly. When he was younger, he'd exaggerate his limp a little, drag his feet until they grated against the asphalt; breath hard until it puffed in front of him, as if it'd envelop his body and float him up to outer space. He'd paint the streets in his own blood, letting it trail behind him and relish in those terrified gasps, saucer-eyes, and hands rummaging through purses. Made him feel noticed. Alive. Real. It was “concern” that he’d always take for kindness and he loved kindness more than anything in the universe.

He considers himself a great anomaly in the grand-scale of things; an expatriate trying so desperately to make a home for himself in the sun. Ash often fantasized of some genial old lady noticing the discoloration of his skin and the tatters of his clothes. She’d stop him on the street and take a handkerchief with her name embroidered on it— Marjorie, Prudence, Deborah— out from her coat pocket and wipe away the dirt on his face. She’d invite him for tea back at her apartment and Ash, warily, would accept. A few cats would welcome him in, rub their cotton faces against his calves. Her furniture would be covered in plastic and the cuckoo clock adorning the peeling floral wallpaper would be minutes away from going off. As if prepared for this very moment, she’d take a charcuterie board of crackers and cheese out for Ash to nibble on as she treats his cuts with ointment and gauze.

 _“How did you get all banged up?_ ” she’d ask. The orange cat would jump on his lap, stretching it’s belly over his thighs; thinking him of nothing more than his property to lay on. Ash supposes that’s not new.

“ _Couple of bullies.”_ That’s a lie and they both know it.

And she’d tell him to stay a while, at least, until he’s all rested. Who’d refuse a warm bed and a chance at normalcy for even a moment? So he’d stay. And he’d stay for more than a couple of hours and days. Weeks turned into months. Months into years. In this alternate world, Golzine and his men can’t find him. Here, he’d live quietly where he cannot get hurt and the system works the way it should and protects him. Prosecutes all that had wronged him.

The endless possibilities are what keeps him going. Possibilities of nice old women just waiting to adopt him, or Griff waking up from his catatonic state and taking a step out of his wheelchair all on his own.

And the possibilities are how he met her.

He found kindness in a girl at fourteen. It was a Thursday morning after a particularly bad night with a client. She was at a bus stop. He was limping back to Golzine’s. Maybe she had the same powers as him. Maybe she’s a glitch in the system too. Whatever it was, she saw him, and he didn’t even _need_ to act for her to bat an eyelash. She thrusted a shirt in front of him— a jersey with the lucky number seven and her last name pressed onto the back in white. 

“Here. Wear this,” she told him before hopping onto the yellow bus. Her fate was sealed.

He saw her the next morning, hand-washed jersey in hand. Ash tried the best he could to scrub every trace of him out— blood and rheum and gunpowder. Right back to its original state, as if they had never met. It was supposed to be a one time encounter, really. A smile was all it took, a thank you, and he was hooked. She fed him crumbs and he kept coming back.

Two encounters, three, twelve, twenty. Enough encounters to walk a hundred laps around Central Park. Enough encounters to muster up the courage to hold her hand in his and rub his thumb over her knuckles. Enough to love her— or, at least he thought it was love. It was hard to tell. He was young. They both were.

It must have been Encounter Forty-one. A summer afternoon in the Bronx. Popsicles stuck to and sticky on their mouths, puckering them pink. That day, everything about her was amplified, too much for him to handle and think straight. She was so pretty, smelled like the wildflowers that’d spring up back in Cape Cod. Her playful shoves seemed to linger on his skin, hot. She was golden, swallowing sunbeams with every word she spoke and every giggle; the fountain of youth overflowing and lapping at his ankles.

Like paradise in the city. New York never looked so beautiful. For once, he had fit into this side of the world. The clocks turned back and he _felt_ fourteen with the thick lump in his throat and the blush that never seemed to leave his face and the curve of his shoulders.

So this was love. Love was the honey in her eyes, the bounce of her dark curls with every step. It was the sound of her voice, light and airy with cheer and her unsullied spirit. Love was a chilly night spent sitting on a bench, her hand folded in his. It was him leaning forward, feeling her breath hitch on his lips, the awkward nudge of their noses— until it wasn’t.

“I should get going,” she told him, pulling her head back shyly. “It’s getting late.”

“Oh. Right. Yeah, of course.” And just like that, love was stomped on and discarded with the untangling of her fingers.

Did she not love him back? Didn’t think he was enough? Then again, love to her was probably chocolate and coffeeshop dates down at Fifth, while all he ever knew were handprints on his throat, waist, and hip and crumpled twenty dollar bills. Men came and went throughout his life and dashed him against the wall, forcing love on him like lashes from a whip.

This is all he knew.

She has a long life of firsts to explore, while all of his was snatched away from him at seven. She shouldn't be burdened with a first kiss with him of all people.

“I’ll catch you later, okay AJ?” She hopped up on her feet. The moonlight reflected on her cooly, like she was underwater and they were separated by a thick, glass barrier.

“Want me to walk you home?” he asked.

“Nah, it's fine. You should get going too. Your folks’ll get worried.” He suppressed the inclination to laugh. “See you tomorrow.”

“See you.”

There are no more encounters after forty-one.

The last time he sees her, she's static on his TV screen. She’s in a black body bag, wheeled away from the Hudson River. Something about a gunshot wound to the chest, or was it the stomach? He doesn’t know. It hits him all at once. The glass had finally shattered and a dam had rushed out to rip into his flesh. The river had eaten her up, withered all of her dreams and wrung the sunbeams out of her, his love along with it. All because of her kindness. All because of him.

He shouldn’t have been surprised. He let his guard down, let himself be swept away with all of these possibilities of found families and true romance.

A fool he had been to think he could ever attain that kind of peace. The message was loud and clear. This is where he belongs, where he’ll always be. Death follows wherever he treads and it snatches anyone who dares to watch walk beside him. 

He makes it inside the complex without drawing attention. He hobbles toward the elevator and presses the _up_ button. Ash uses his sleeve to wipe the blood off of it. The seconds go by agonizingly slow. Missus Coleman could emerge from the elevator door and call an ambulance. What would he do then? Go for her phone? Run? Hide? _Kill_ —

No, he couldn’t possibly! He’d be no different from Golzine if he did that. There are other ways to handle that kind of situation. You don’t need a gun to solve trivial things like that. Use your head. They always tell you how gifted it is. Why can’t you use it right? Why did _that_ even come to mind in the first place? A waste, really, or maybe it was a mistake that it was bestowed on someone like you. 

_Ding!_

His heart drops and he freezes for a second, waiting for a housewife to step out. Cautiously, Ash peeks his head inside.

Empty.

Ash lets out a sigh of relief and goes in, tapping the _close door_ button in rapid succession.

Then, it’d be easy to go back to the hideout and crash onto his mattress, tossing his wounds into a pile of tomorrow’s problems. But now at eighteen, he faces the same dilemma all over again.

Something and someone is there waiting for him behind closed doors. A hot meal. Bandages. Clean clothes clipped onto a clothesline, swaying to the whisper of twilight. He thinks of him alone in that apartment, twisting the red from his shirt and letting himself become dirty with his sin. And he’d always do it with a smile, like this was the natural order of things. How things just _are_. Ash will make the messes, and he’d always be there to clean them in his own little way; a new recipe perhaps, or patches in torn shirts. Maybe it’ll be gauze or stories of a sister on the other side of the world right before nightmares.

 _“Welcome home, Ash!”_ he’d always greet, pulling him by the arm into this oasis they’ve haphazardly built together. 

_“I’m home.”_ It’d just off the tongue like that, before he could think. Before he could fret and mull over body bags.

He keeps coming back. He keeps keying the door and taking his shoes off at the entrance, saying he’s home and worrying him, so much so that Ash knows exactly where the wrinkles on his face will form when his eyes land on the sorry state he’s found in. Ash knows how this will all end and despite these facts, he always finds his way to him like a moth drawn to a flame— a fool once more for something forbidden.

This time for sure he’ll get him to leave, to return back to his world. He’ll give him the cold shoulder, or maybe raise his voice a little. He’ll give him a taste of Hell, scare him off so that he runs away and never comes back—

“Ash?”

“Here, Eiji,” he says, thoughts melting away with the sound of his sleepy sweet voice.

Eiji rubs the crust of his dreams out of his eyes and gasps at the sight of reality. Ash smiles at him reassuringly, shrugging his shoulders as if to say: _“They put up a fight this time.”_ Eiji shakes his head in response, scolding him with the jut of his bottom lip. 

Quickly, he moves to Ash’s aid. Eiji fastens his arm around his waist as they scurry over to the couch. Ash doesn’t need the help, but it felt nice having him hold him like that.

“You stay put, alright?” Eiji flicks the recess lights on. It takes a minute for Ash’s eyes to readjust. When it does, he watches as Eiji shuffles back and forth, from room to room, gathering his supplies.

“Now, where did I put those washcloths?” Ash hears him under his breath. Eiji’s treating this as life or death, rummaging through cabinets and making an absolute _mess_. It’s endearing, however, that someone cares for him that much. He sinks into the couch and his face softens as he fixes on Eiji’s cowlick springing up and down as he runs in circles. What an airhead. He chuckles.

Eiji hears his laughter and huffs.

“You should see your hair right now,” Ash says with a smirk, blowing his bangs out of his face. Noting Eiji’s stoicism, it vanishes almost immediately.

Eiji sets down a basin of water on the wooden coffee table in front of him and folds the rolls of his pajama shirt to his elbows. It’s Ash’s cue to take off his coat. He does so carefully, trying not to irritate the fresh lattices on his skin. Eiji holds the lapels out and Ash wriggles free.

“I need to apply pressure—”

“Done that,” cuts in Ash, as if to score some brownie points with him. “‘S not bleeding so much anymore, at least, compared to earlier.” Eiji, expectantly, is not pleased. He sits down beside Ash and dips the cloth into the basin and wrings it out.

“Let me see.” The trails of blood running down his arm had already begun to dry into translucent streaks. Eiji holds him by the elbow and twists his arm gently to view the backside and catches the suck of air inhaled through gritted teeth. Eiji flashes him a worried expression, furrowing the bush of his brows at Ash’s poorly hidden discomfort. “I’ll be quick. I’ll clean around it and wrap it up.”

Ash nods his head. Then, a silence befalls them.

The water is cold. Once it comes in contact with the blood, it’s almost like watercolors. It sloshes around abstractly, his blood and someone else’s, though it’s much more water than it is pigment. He figures if you were to put it on a canvas, it’d look like a shitty, knock-off O’Keeffe work with spider lilies. Somehow, Eiji is able to make it seem beautiful. He’s got this down to an art; wipes his arm first with the wet cloth, and then quickly switches to a dry one, wet again, and then dry.

Eiji’s breathing is calm as he applies the salve. He remembers the first time he had come back like this and the heave of his chest, the shake in his fingertips. Now, he moves with purpose and stillness, as if a breath would be all it would take to blow him over. Eiji is so unbearably quiet now as he does this that it makes Ash anxious. Is he upset that he allowed himself to get hurt like this? Angry? Does he see him as a burden? Is he finally getting tired of this little cage he had locked him in, enough to want to fly back to Japan and leave him in the shadows?

“What… What did you do today?” asks Ash impulsively, moreso to ease his apprehension than out of curiosity. Eiji does not look up at him as he unrolls the gauze. Ash holds his breath at the glint of Eiji’s fang tearing into it.

“Well, you know,” he drones, “I took a few photos and made some tea. Folded some clothes. Ate last night’s leftovers for lunch. I took a nap and then I cooked some dinner.” Eiji dresses his wounds like the bandage is made of the finest bobbin lace and his body is his mannequin. He wraps it firmly a couple of times before tying it into a neat, white ribbon. “Ah. I might’ve overcooked your steak a little. I can always whip up something else.”

“No.” Ash shakes his head. “No, it’s fine. Anything you cook is bound to taste delicious.” His face burns at how easily he was spewing his feelings out for him, but he supposes it was worth it now that a smile had finally graced Eiji’s lips.

“I’ll do the other arm now.”

Eiji is wise to not pose the same question. _What did you do today?_ Well, he had shot someone dead right between the eyes. Saw the splatter of red encircling his head like a halo as he dropped to the ground, brain matter seeping into the cracks of the asphalt. He turned someone’s own switchblade against them. Drove it right into the chest cavity and twisted despite his pleas for mercy. His last words were a prayer, drowned out by the blood gurgling in his mouth. Ash wonders who it was for.

One, two, three body bags. More faces to haunt him in his dreams.

Self-defense, he’d always convince himself. Kill or be killed. May the best man live. This is how it is, how it always has been. So why is he questioning it now, thinking of all of these guys that hadn’t personally wronged him? He thinks of them, some around his age or even younger. It’d be a different narrative if they were a part of his gang. He’d know them by name, know their birthdays. They’d shoot soda cans in an alley and sit on steps and look up at the night sky with a cold beer in their hands, waiting for a shooting star to wish on; pretty girls, a million bucks, or a better life after death.They could have been Ash. Could have been Skip or Shorter or Alex or Bones or Kong. But they had chosen incorrectly. They were Arthur and Golzine.

Eiji takes his face in his hand and angles it so that he can clean the clotted cut on his cheek. It catches Ash completely off guard and pulls him back into the sun. He’s almost embarrassed at how hot his face had become from this touch alone. He wonders if Eiji had noticed the change.

His fingers look pretty up close, so slender and knobby at the knuckles. Each of his nails are cut in neat ellipses and blush the faintest of pinks. Ash would call them delicate, but the pads of his fingers on his jaw feel terribly rough and calloused, probably from the fiberglass of his pole or reckless burns from a stove. But they hold the same charm as when they handle cameras and tend to every inch of him with meticulous care and considerate deftness. He almost leans into its touch. Almost.

Everything is tended to, even the tiniest of parts. His eyelids, the dip of his cupid’s bow, curve of his brow and his ear; caressing his helices and behind them as if they were a seashells he had plucked from gilded sand. He wipes his cheek steadfastly, enough to erase the freckles dotting there. Ash feels completely and utterly bare.

There is a bit of a reprieve when he gets the salve from the table, though his other hand is still cupping his face as if it’d never find its way back if they were to separate.

No cloth this time, just the warmth of _him_. Ash winces, and Eiji stops his ministrations momentarily to make sure he’s okay. Ash smiles and finally decides to lean into his palm.

“You’re heavy!” jokes Eiji lightheartedly. Ash is relieved he is acting a bit more like himself.

“I should be weightless to a jock like you.”

“‘Jock?’” Eiji tilts his head at the unfamiliar term.

“A sports maniac, basically,” Ash explains like he’s the smartest man in the universe.

Eiji’s lips form an ‘o’ and he lights up at his expanding vocabulary.

“‘Jock...’” he repeats, trying to get rid of his extra vowel. “‘Jock.’”

How much time had passed? Did Eiji forget he had him in his palm, aching and longing, or was this newfangled term more important? Though, Ash can’t help but admire his brilliance and his stare darting away from him when his idiosyncratic extra vowel continued to hang onto the one-syllabled ‘jock.’

“ _Joooock_ ,” he draws out this time, mimicking Ash’s blasé tone. “Ah! You heard that one, right Ash? You've gotta tell me you heard that!”

“Yeah.” No. He was too busy staring at the mole under his eye. Without even knowing it, he had subconsciously leaned closer to him, just a hair’s breadth away from him now. They're sharing the same air. One shove forward, and he'd feel him all over his body and reopen all of the wounds.

Eiji stutters. “Sorry, am I too—”

“Stay,” Ash says, _implores._

The couch morphs into a bench and all the lights shut off, blue spilling on their bodies in buckets. This time however, Eiji does not pull away or take his hands off of him. There is no barrier. They’re here together, almost as one; affections unfettered and ready to explode in their faces.

Is this it? Is it Eiji’s cowlick? Well-done steaks? Is it the hardened tips of his fingers, his accent or the cute mole under his eye? He prays it isn’t— _God, please, say it’s not_ . But he knows it to be true by the way he fears his pulse may end him right there if Eiji keeps looking at him and the space separating them like that, holding him so _tenderly_.

Ash’s affection is dastardly, curses anyone it preys upon, but he can’t help but try to tempt fate with the way Eiji’s eyes are twinkling, reflecting endless possibilities; the ones he only ever wishes on evening stars. He is a fool, a headstrong one as stubborn as Eiji’s extra vowel. He is a fool willing to stake his life for him.

It will be different this time. He vows it will be.

Ash's eyes flutter shut. He immerses himself in love.

**Author's Note:**

> trying to sword fight my writer's block,,,,,, am i winning?? only time will tell.  
> anyway ty for reading...., am going to zzzzz <3333  
> [twitter!](https://mobile.twitter.com/selfetish)


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